


To Pieces

by harlequinxgirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky has a fake name, Bucky is calling himself Jake for some reason, F/M, Inhumans - Freeform, Jake doesn't sound anything like James, Max is probably a bit of a communist, Metal arm? What metal arm, Powered individuals, Robin Hood virus, Sokovia Accords, Technopathy, Undercover Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7098754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harlequinxgirl/pseuds/harlequinxgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A college dropout, Max is perfectly content with not living up to her potential; working a series of crummy jobs, dating a series of crummy men and trying not to get too distracted by the new neighbor in her crummy apartment building. He calls himself Jake, and his appearance, along with a series of EMPs in New York city and the emergence of a powered individual who robs from the rich to give to the poor; combine to wreak havoc on Max’s uncomplicated life. </p><p>Eventual smut.</p><p>Set post-Civil War where the Sokovian Accord has been in place for several months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first four chapters of this work have been rewritten to be stronger and more cohesive. If you have read this previously, I would recommend re-reading the first four chapters just to be safe. 
> 
> Thank you for your continued support, kudos and comments. 
> 
> Max is an ordinary girl trying to live an uncomplicated life, which might prove to be far more difficult when six feet of sex on legs move in next door.

Beneath her grease stained hands, Max could feel the engine thrum to life like it was talking to her, telling her its secrets. 

She stepped back and wiped her hands on her dark jeans, not that it did much to remove the grease. 

She gave Pop a thumbs up through the windscreen.

“That should do it,” she said, as she zipped up her hoodie.

“Damn computers he muttered, “’cause everyone needs a chip to roll their windows down now”.

“Embrace it Pop, it’s the way of the future”

“The way I see it, it’s the way of the current!” He replied, waving his grease-stained hand at the car behind him.

In the latter half of the sixth decade of a hard life, you could still see the shadow of the man he would have been. 

Max rolled her eyes at the familiar refrain and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

“Well at least you can call me when you run into trouble,” she said, “do you have time for a quick check up before I jet?” she was already steering him towards the office of the garage. 

He’d owned the auto shop for the better part of the past thirty years, had worked there longer, and was as much a fixture as the place itself, which he’d repeatedly, stubbornly, refused to sell to developers. 

He sat down in the sagging chair behind the desk piled with more paperwork than was reasonable. 

Mac rolled the sleeves of her hoodie back and laid her hands over the left side of Pop’s chest. 

“Any problems lately?”

He shook his head, leaning back in the chair. Beneath her hands, Max could feel the surprisingly strong beat of Pop’s heart, calm and measured. 

She took a step back and rolled her sleeves back down.

“Sounds good from where I stand,” she said with a smile. 

“Don’t forget Saturday,” he said as he walked her to the door of the office, “there’ll be a place set for you, Marlene’s making lasagna”

“Sounds awesome”

And it did. Marlene’s cooking made living worthwhile. Max flipped the hood of her jacket up and leaned forward on her toes to kiss Pop’s cheek. 

He handed her a fifty that she shoved in her satchel as she walked away from the garage. 

It was just two blocks from her apartment in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. It had been a full day with an eight hour shift at the cafe and then the emergency job for Pop. She was looking forward to a quiet night in. 

The apartment was one of the neighbourhood’s originals. The ground floor was home to a Panini bar advertising ‘the World’s Best Coffee’, a drug store that had seen better days, a place selling second hand books and a barber.

It was also one of the luckiest in the neighbourhood. A few years before it had only lost some of its decorate balustrade in the Battle of New York, despite the wormhole spitting forth Chitauri just blocks away. 

Max had watched the live coverage in horror from her university dorm, long before she took the tiny studio on the fifth floor. 

Since then it had also withstood mechanical octopuses, a tentacled she-demon straight out of a Lovecraft story and a good old-fashioned fire triggered by crappy wiring. 

Max let herself in the tenant’s door beside the Panini bar and stopped to check her mail. All bills. Good luck to them. She began the five-floor walk up to her apartment.

***

Max shimmied out of her hoodie and hung it up on the rack by the door as she simultaneously reached into the fridge for a beer.

Luckily the studio was small enough to let her do both at the same time. It had been a find, but it didn’t fit much besides the fridge, her bed and an overstuffed armchair; but then Mac had never really had much stuff to fit in places, just a few books, her laptop and phone, a leather jacket and too many shoes for such as minimalist.

Using the edge of the kitchen bench for leverage (the wood was pocked and scarred from all the times she’d done it before), she popped the cap on the beer and took a long sip.

The refrigerator was nearly as ancient as the walk up itself, and it cost her half her pay packet in electricity bills, but it sure knew how to keep a beer cold.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the windows. Max shucked her jeans and pulled on a pair of shorts, crossing to the window that opened onto the fire escape. From there she had a near perfect view over the river, it was almost as good as having her own balcony. 

The window whined in protest as she shouldered it up and climbed onto the sill. Somewhere she could feel her phone ringing; probably Helen, she’d call her back. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of movement on the fire escape and sat up to get a better look just as she heard the telltale whine of the old metal shifting beneath somebody’s weight. Jake. Her neighbor.

He’d moved in to the next apartment over a couple of weeks earlier. Her naturally anti-social tendencies, coupled with her ten-hour days meant she’d not even met the last guy to live there (and he’d been living there before she moved in).

The day before Jake moved in, Max had gotten fired from a crummy office temp job; then she’d gotten drunk. Really fucking drunk. She’d woken up feeling like she’d deep throated a muppet and then realised she wasn’t alone in bed. 

It took her a few panicked moments to remember his name was Ben; he was the bass player in the band she’d seen the night before. She’d made herself a coffee while Ben found his pants and, unfortunately, Jake had been moving an armchair in to his new flat at the exact time that Max and Ben had exchanged their awkward goodbyes. 

Jake had watched them with barely concealed fascination as Ben ambled off down the stairs, offering a weak promise to call her (he didn’t have her number) over his shoulder.

“Rough night?” Jake had asked, and Max had turned to look at him properly for the first time.

Never one to be ashamed to be caught looking at something worth seeing, Max let her eyes wash over his chest beneath the grey Henley before drifting towards a well-sculpted face covered in a few days’ growth, and long dark hair that hung around his shoulders, half obscuring his features; but man, those baby blues.

Her senses were still dulled from the night before, but she could feel something sparking in her as those eyes appraised her. 

“You must be my new neighbor,” she’d finally mustered.

“Yeah, Jake”

She’d nodded and then retreated back to the comfort of her flat, closing the door and going back to bed. 

She’d only seen him a couple of times since, and, without the benefit of a head-splitting hangover, she would feel the blush rise in her cheeks every time, remembering the state he’d first seen her in. 

It took her a while to put her finger on why it bothered her so much. Usually she didn’t give two fucks what people thought of her (top of the list of reasons why she got fired from the crummy office job). 

Her attraction to him and hit so suddenly that she hadn’t, at first, recognised it for what it was. 

With her ex, Dan, the attraction had been a slow burn, flamed over months of getting to know him and his brilliant mind. The fact that he was her Professor had helped. Why was fucking your teacher so hot?

With Jake though, it had been almost instant. Those blue-grey eyes had burned right into and through her and she found herself overcome with the nervous energy whenever he was around. Her stomach would start to roil and she would feel heat rise into her cheeks and she would have to catch herself before she made herself obvious by touching his arm, or flicking her hair or some other, awful cliché. 

“Hey,” she said, and he looked up from below his baseball cap. 

“Hey,” His voice was rough, raspy, like he was getting laryngitis, or perhaps just smoked too much, he usually had a cigarette dangling from the fingers of his left hand.

“Jesus man, you burning the midnight oil?” 

“What are you trying to say?” He asked.

“I’m saying you look like shit”

It wasn’t strictly true. Jake’s ‘scruffy as fuck’ still beat the hell out of anyone else’s ‘good day’.

He nodded and took a sip from his own beer, looking out towards the river.

“You don’t exactly look like an oil painting yourself darlin’” he finally replied, nodding towards her grease-stained fingers. 

Max shrugged and took another sip of her beer.

“I’ve put in a hard day’s work”

“You’ve never heard of Pears’ soap?”

“Fuck off”

She felt a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, and even Jake cracked a smile before draining the last of his beer and letting the empty bottle dangle from his fingers. 

Helen had met him one night when she was over for drinks and he’d been on the fire escape. She’d proceeded to spend the rest of the night waxing lyrical about his lips. 

“That fucking mouth of his,” She’d moaned. Max had nodded, it hadn’t assed her notice. 

“That mouth of his could make a good woman go bad” 

Max had raised a shot glass to that.

“…could turn her into a common whore,” Helen had continued, her own lips quirked into a devilish grin as Max had choked on her drink. 

Max finished her own beer and stood up, ready for a break from being hot and bothered by a guy nothing was every going to happen with. 

“See you around neighbor” she said quickly, ignoring the surprise that flitted across his fact. She only had another hour before she was supposed to meet Helen at a club anyway. 

“Yeah sure”

Max closed her window with a sense of finality she didn’t truly feel.

***

She stood back from the engine of the Audi and gratefully accepted a cup of strong black coffee from Pop.

In the corner of the workshop a TV was playing a morning show hosted by a bubbly blonde and the requisite older leading man. 

i>…Clayton Financial Group is the latest victim of what people are calling the ‘Robin Hood Virus’. The virus appears to infect the technology of financial organisations and funnel money through a complex web of international trading zones. And rumours originating on a Reddit forum suggest that money siphoned through the ‘Robin Hood Virus’ has appeared in the accounts of charities back here in the United States…

“Hear the latest?” Pop asked and Max nodded. He gave her a meaningful look before shuffling over to where a motorbike had just pulled into the garage. 

“They can put some money in my account” laughed one of the other mechanics, cackling into his own coffee.

“What about you Max?” He called out, “Could you do with a few million?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘no’” She replied with a smile.

_…cracking down and implementing new measures amid claims that ANONYMOUS may be behind the super virus…_

“Max!”

Pop was waving her over to where he stood by the bike, a classic Royal Einfeld, definitely a British make. She let her eyes roam over the piece of machinery in the same way other people would appreciate a bouquet of flowers or a painting. 

A voice cleared and her head shot up and she was staring into those eyes again.

“Jake”

“Hey, she’s uh…she’s riding a bit rough and I thought maybe my favourite neighbor might take a look at it for me”

Pop stood back, watching their interaction with interest. 

“Yeah sure, I uh…” she faltered and turned to Pop to give him the look to leave dammit old man! But he was having too much fun.

“This is nice,” he said, hands in his pockets. 

Jake ran his hand across the bike seat. 

“I’ve had her for years”

“She’s beautiful” Max said, “we’ll take care of her”

“So you’re neighbours eh?” Pop asked and Max tried not to roll her eyes.

“Yeah Pop” Max said, noticing the way Jake’s eyebrow jumped at her familiar nickname for the old man. 

“You keep an eye on our Max?” Pop asked Jake, putting his arm around her, “she’s one-in-a-million”

“Oh God, shut up” Max muttered, a blush spreading across her cheeks while Jake smirked and Pop ignored her.

“Absolutely” Jake agreed and he shot Max a wink that made heat bloom in the pit her stomach. Oh yeah, that would be filed away for future use.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drinks, dancing, the Boss and…bionic limbs?
> 
>  
> 
> AN: Hey guys, so this is an idea that I've been playing around with for a while, borne mostly from my frustration at the lack of strong female characters in FF. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about the story or about Max.

Helen pushed two whiskey shots towards Max and snatched her mobile from her hands, arching an eyebrow when she saw who Max was texting.

“Dan? Seriously?”

Max shrugged. 

“We’re just talking”

“That is a slippery slope chick-a-dee,” Helen said as she took her shot, “wading back into ex territory…”

Max pouted and Helen shrugged, nudging one of Max’s shot glasses closer to her. 

“What are you guys talking about anyway?”

“He’s working on a new project, he wanted some advice”

“Wasn’t he your teacher?”

Max shrugged against and grinned at Helen.

“You know I have hidden talents”

Helen shook her head. 

“So you’re just texting back and forth about a project?”

Max’s face reddened and Helen smirked.

“Well no, it’s just you know, ‘how are you?’, ‘What have you been up to?’ That kind of thing”

“Nothing sexy?”

Max growled and snatched the phone back. 

“Oh, that reminds me,” Helen said, digging her own phone out of her pocket and handing it to Max, “can you transfer my music to the external memory?”

“You know, you can do that yourself”

“Ugh but it takes so long, you’re way quicker”

Max sighed and held the phone, visualising the files in her mind and shuffling them quickly. All told she transferred the seven gigabytes in about four seconds. 

She handed the phone back to Helen.

“See? That would have taken hours for me to do, it would’ve been a whole thing”

Max wasn’t buying it.

“You’re taking advantage of me”

“Don’t be ridiculous, what’s the good of having a superpowered friend if they can’t help you out of a bind”  
Max snorted.

“Hardly superpowered”

“Oh I’m sorry, how many people are there on the face of the planet who can sync with and control technology?”

“Fine, but I don’t feel superhuman, you can still kick my ass in a kick boxing class”

Helen nodded, she couldn’t argue with that.

“Did you see the group of inhumans who were arrested leaving Turkey last week?”

Max nodded and concentrated hard on her scotch.

Helen leaned forward and touched her arm.

“You know I’ll keep your secret to my dying breath right?”

Max stared into Helen’s big brown eyes. She knew.

Helen had known about Max’s abilities for years. Since they’d been set up on a blind date when they were both in their first weeks of college. The date had been amazing, they had clicked straight away and then they’d wound up in a hipster coffee shop where the music was too loud to hear each other and Max had…nudged it a little; probably showing off. Helen, a seasoned people-watcher had been delighted. 

The chemistry they had on their date though, didn’t extend to the bedroom where they seemed completely mismatched and hopeless and instead of lovers they’d become best friends. 

“Of course I do you fungus”

Helen leaned back and picked up her drink.

“Do you remember that night we couldn’t get a cab so you got into the subway system and made the nearest train miss all its stop to get to ours in three minutes?”

Max cringed.

“Oh God! I do! That was terrible of me!”\

Helen laughed along but then suddenly turned serious. 

“Just be careful”

“I’m always careful”

Helen cocked her head, the universal symbol for _really?_

“Because I love you. And you love me right?”

Max rolled her eyes.

“Yes Helen, I love you”

“Okay, well, you just remember that,” Helen stuck out her tongue and settled into the booth seat. 

_Saffron_ was another dive bar, but it was their dive bar. 

And on a Saturday night the staff pushed the sofas closer together to reveal a small dancefloor.

Max finally took her shots. 

“I think you just need to get laid”

“That’s your answer for everything,” Max replied. 

“What doesn’t it answer?” 

“I get laid, I get laid plenty”

Helen didn’t even both to hide her obnoxious snort. 

“When?!”

“You don’t know my life!”

“I know that your life consists largely of working on dirty old engines and bingeing Netflix”

“Yeah, well…” 

There wasn’t really much to say in response to that though. Since she’d dropped out of Columbia in such spectacular fashion, her life hadn’t exactly been the stuff of fairytales. Not that it had been before, but she’d just expected…more, somehow. 

“No seriously, when was the last time you got laid?”

Max screwed up her eyes as though she had to think about it. She didn’t. 

“Um, Ben the bass player”

Helen stared at her.

“What about your scorching hot neighbor? You know, the one with the long dark hair, the three day growth and the smirk that needs to be between my legs right now...”

Max flushed.

“What about him?”

“Have you jumped that yet?”

Perish the thought. 

“He’s my neighbor”

“Exactly! He’s convenient”

Helen was incorrigible. Max toyed with her empty glass. She hadn’t confided in Helen the effect that Jake had on her whenever she got within a few feet of him, the heat that pooled low in her body and had her pressing her thighs together. 

“What?” Helen asked, noticing the look on Max’s face.

“I can’t even be around him,” Max said finally, “he makes me catch my breath. I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to another person. His voice, his eyes, they just…they do things to me”

Helen grinned conspiratorially and leaned closer.

“Things?”

Max blushed. 

“What sorts of things?”

“Stop it”

“He makes you all tingly? He makes you wet?”

“Oh God stop!”

Helen laughed. 

“I’ve never felt like that before,” Max said, “not so instantly”

“Not even with Dan?”

She shook her head.

“It’s just chemistry baby-cakes” Helen said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. 

“So what do I do about it?”

Helen shrugged.

“Fuck him or don’t.”

As if it was the simplest thing in the world.

***

Helen gave Max a wave from the bar where she was getting them more drinks. 

They’d finally gotten off the subject of Jake. Max loved Helen, she really did, but the girl seemed to have an unnatural interest in the health of Max’s sex life. 

Helen’s own sex life never seemed to go through the same dry patches. Even now, waiting for drinks, she was flirting up a storm with the poor guys at the bar. 

She turned, holding a tray with more shots and two bottles of imported beer, giving Max an exaggerated wink. 

“Bottoms up Baby Doll,” she said as she reached the table, sliding the tray onto the table and slinked back into her seat, “courtesy of a handsome stranger”.

“Oh God” Max moaned, who are you conning out of drinks now?”

“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers”

Max folded her arms across her chest and pouted. 

“Now you’re giving me petulant teenager?” Helen asked in mock horror.

Max played along, rolling her eyes and sliding low in her seat. As she did, she noticed the familiar figure walking towards them, beer in hand.

Jake’s long hair was gathered into a knot at the nape of his neck and he’d gone about a week without a shave. 

Max was pretty sure her eyes were out on heart-shaped stalks like a Bugs Bunny cartoon as she stared at him.

When she turned back, Helen was wearing a smug grin.

“What did you do?” Max hissed.

Helen shrugged as she moved to the edge of her booth seat, so the only space available was next to Max. 

“You love me, you told me so, no backsies”

***

Jake had slotted into the booth beside her like he’d always been there, and Max was having to expend at least sixty per cent of her brainpower on not noticing how firm and warm his denim-clad thigh was against her bare one. Luckily, Helen was flirting enough for both of them.

“Right,” said Helen, downing her rum and coke, “I’m going for a dance”.

Max watched her leave. Fourteen years of classical ballet and seven of pole dancing classes, the crowd at Saffron didn’t know what was about to hit ‘em.

Max turned to face Jake and found him staring straight at her. Her face flushed and she ducked her head down, letting her hair hide her pink-tinged cheeks. 

After a few seconds had passed she looked back and he was still watching her, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. 

“So thanks for working on my bike,”

“S’alright” she replied, thumbing at the peeling label on her beer bottle.

“Is the guy, the garage owner, is he family?”

“Nah, just a good friend”

Max was still a student when she met Pops and Marlene. She was getting pie and coffee in the early hours of the morning and Pops and his wife had just come from a late-night movie. Pops was halfway through his vanilla milkshake when his pacemaker failed and his heart slowed to a stop. 

She’d felt his tech-assisted heartbeat the minute he’d walked in, and felt its absence milliseconds before he slumped from his seat onto the tiled floor. 

Marlene had thought Max was a med student the way she’d rushed to his side, but that was no explanation for the way she’d laid her hand on his chest and given him a jump start, or the fain burn mark her hand had left behind. 

It felt like every nerve in her body was squirming, urging her to lean into him the same way plants are compelled to grow towards the sun. 

She felt him reach up and rest his arm along the back of the booth and it took all of her will not to melt in to the hollow of his side. 

Out on the dancefloor Helen was moving like she was born for it and Max watched her with an intensity she didn’t feel. 

“Your friend is something”

His breath fell hot across her left shoulder, bare underneath the thin straps of her top. She nodded.

“Yep”

“She was the one who suggested I come sit with you”

Max smiled tightly. 

“But you don’t seem to share that sentiment”

She jumped and turned to tell him he was wrong, that she’d sit next to him, pressed against his hard body and sharing his warmth, until the end of the world, but when she did she saw a glint in his eye. He was joking with her. 

She smiled gently. 

“Come on Doll, I’m just teasing”

Doll? Jesus H Christ, that would be featuring her soon-to-have fantasies…

She leaned closer to him.

“You can tease me anytime”

If she hadn’t already clocked up all those whiskey shots, she’d want to slap her hand over her mouth for that one. Jake’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly before he grinned easily and leaned closer to her, his body looming over her and she suddenly realized how big he was. 

“That so?” he finally asked. He voice had dropped an octave and her eyes flicked down to those pillowed lips. Helen was right about his mouth, what could it turn her into?

***

”Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it’s a death trap…”

Max closed her eyes.

“Helen! Jesus! You’ll wake up the whole street”

She threw an apologetic smile at Jake where he was flagging down a cab. Helen shook her surprisingly coordinated hips. 

“It’s a suicide wrap, we’ve gotta get out while we’re young…”

Max shook her head and shouldered Helen towards the waiting cab. As she was bundled in, Helen suddenly reached for Max’s hand and gave Max a not-so-surprisingly lopsided wink.

“Make sure you get your boy tonight baby doll” She said before pressing her lips to Max’s chastely. 

As the cab pulled away they could still hear Helen singing.

“…’cause baby we were boooooorrrnnnnnn to ruuuuuunnnnnnn!”

“What was that song?” Jake asked as the cab drove off. 

Max gaped at him and he looked confused. 

“The song Helen was singing” he said, as if to clarify.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Yeah…” he was starting to sound uncertain as they walked the half block to their flats. 

“It was the Boss!” Max cried, warmed through by the beer and whiskey, her jacket tucked through the shoulder strap of her bag. 

Jake looked at her uncertainly, like he knew she should know who she was talking about, but didn’t anyway.

“Bruce Springsteen?” Max asked, “Born to run? Come on man, you have to be fucking with me”

“I uh…I came from a non-musical family”

“Yeah under a fucking rock” Max muttered as she shouldered the door into their building. 

She had recovered some of her nerve over the past couple of hours and let herself bump against him as they climbed the stairs, enjoying the sensation it sent pooling between her thighs. 

As they rounded the last corner before their floor she lost her footing and automatically reached towards him, grasping his left forearm, and she froze. 

He caught her expertly but her fingers were still tingling from where she’d touched him, his arm, his bionic arm. Why hadn’t she felt it before now. Usually should only had to be within a few hundred feet of technology to sense it, like a ripple in the air around her. It was like this was shrouded. 

“Are you okay?” he asked and she shook her head to clear it. 

“Yeah, sorry, I’m an ass”

“You’re anything but that”

She smiled and let him help her up the last few steps and to her door. She leaned against it and he leaned over her, bracing himself on her doorway. 

Get your boy, she thought, and as though compelled she reached out to touch his arm again, stepping in closer to him, pressing up against him. She looked up, his eyes seeming darker than their usual blue-grey. She bit into her bottom lip, steeling herself, ignoring the fluttering in her belly and rocked up onto her tip toes, letting herself fall against him.

Except instead of meeting his lips she felt his hand close around her arm, pushing her away. 

“Max…”

Oh. 

Ohhhhh.

She pulled away like he’d burned her. 

“I’ve gotta…”

He trailed off and she forced herself to look in his eyes, stare down his pity.

“Yeah” She agreed, not looking away as he let himself into his own apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was Chapter Two. I'd love to hear your thoughts so far.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smut has arrived! This is my first time writing detailed smut like this so I hope that it's acceptable. Please be kind.

Max let the teal silk top slip through her fingers to the floor of the makeshift closet in her apartment. Nothing she tried was right. She reached for the glass of wine on a nearby shelf and took a healthy gulp.

“Going somewhere?”

She jumped at Jake’s voice and spun to where he had sat himself in her open window.

“Je-zuz”

He smiled lazily and took a sip from his beer. 

“Where did you come from?” She asked, trying to deflect the note of annoyance in her voice.

It had been three days since she’d made an asshole out of herself in front of him. Three days of creeping in and out of her flat so he wouldn’t hear or see her. Three days of pressing her thighs together neatly whenever she thought about the shade of his eyes when he’d leaned over her. Three days of muffling her cries in her pillow as she tried vainly to sate the heat between her legs with her own fingers and thoughts of his mouth. 

She flushed and took another gulp of wine. 

“I have a date,” she said finally, her voice clipped. 

And she did. With Professor Dan. He’d texted her the night before when she was feeling particularly vulnerable and it had led to hours of flirty messages culminating in an invitation to get a drink and some food and see where the night led them. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him nod as she reached for a flash of red. The dress had been an impulse buy, in that kind of stretchy fabric that was exceedingly unforgiving, Max hadn’t even worn it yet, had even considered putting up on eBay a couple of months before when rent was looking tight. 

She held it up against herself and cocked her head on the side as she glanced into the mirror, probably too much. It joined the top on the floor and she burrowed further into the stash of clothes for a loose navy sheath dress that had served her well. 

“Anyone I know?”

She bit her lip and turned to face him. 

“I doubt it seeing as though you don’t even know Bruce Springsteen” 

He smiled wryly and she turned back the mirror, holding the navy dress up against herself. It wasn’t like she really needed to try with Dan. They’d had their hottest nights when she’d been wearing jeans and a flannel and they’d spent hours poring over their project notes. 

She shivered as she felt Jake’s hot breath on the back of her neck.

“Wear the red”

“What?” she managed to croak out, her voice barely above a whisper. 

She felt his breath again, as though his lips were bare millimetres from her flesh.

“If you want to make an impression on him, wear the red”

By the time she’d recovered herself enough to turn around he was already climbing out her window on the other side of the room. The boy moved like a fucking ninja.

***

Max had hoped the hot shower would soothe her frayed nerves, but she came out just as frustrated as she’d gone in. Her bathroom didn’t have the best exhaust in the world and steam clung to her body so she had to struggle into her only matching bra and panties, leaving her red faced and huffing.

She slipped one of Dan’s old white button-down shirts and twisted her hair up off her face before braving the bathroom again to start her makeup routine. As she reached to open the drawer she felt a jolt of pain behind her right temple, strong enough to make her cry out. 

Her knuckles flashed bright white as she gripped the bathroom counter, the pain bolting back, a white-hot poker that made her vision ripple and fracture like a pane of glass. She felt the lights in the apartment flicker in response to her pain and cried out once more as everything went black. 

She must only have been out long enough to hit the floor but when she came to she felt a new pain radiating in her right cheekbone. She stood up on shaking, coltish legs and cupped her cheek, limping out into her bedroom.

At the same time she heard her apartment door fly open and turned to see Jake standing in her kitchen.

“Are you okay?” He asked, “the power failed and I heard you call out”

The power had come back on as soon as she’d woken up.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, wincing at how pitiful her voice sounded. Jake must have heard it too because he crossed to her in two long strides, taking in the bruise blooming across her cheek.

She bowed under his gaze and ducked away from him.

“I lost my footing,” she said, “when the power went out, hit my cheek on the counter”.

She backed towards the wall but he loomed in on her again, the fingers of his enhanced hand reaching out to touch her face. It looked like a flesh and blood arm, somebody had done great work on it. It felt flesh and blood too, warm, but with the tingle that any technology gave her. 

His finger traced her cheek and she struggled not to melt into him. 

Suddenly her eyes widened, remembering that she was only wearing Dan’s old shirt, that barely covered the forest green lace of her panties.

Jake seemed to realise at the same time and let his hand drop to his side.

“I’m sorry, I…I just heard you and I thought…”

“It’s fine!” She said quickly, “ _I’m_ fine”

He seemed uncertain, shifting the weight on his feet. His jeans hung low on his hips and she wanted to twist her hands in the soft white fabric of his tee shirt. 

His eyes found hers and he seemed to be asking something as he took an unconscious step towards her. Those same eyes moved down and she bit down on her bottom lip, shivering when she heard him groan low in his throat.

His chest was impossibly hard as he pressed her against the wall seconds later and she had the fleeting thought that she might never get her breath back, and found it difficult to care. 

“Are we doing this?” she whispered, and her answer was his mouth slanting over hers and muffling any further speech. 

She’d never felt as small as she did when he was surrounding her; his lips, firm and soft at the same time, moving against hers like it was a fucking competition, his tongue licking into her mouth. 

She felt his hands firm on her hips, pulling her closer to him than she thought possible. 

Finally, mercifully, he pulled away.

“Phone,” he mumbled.

“What?” she asked, kiss-dazed. 

“Your phone” his voice was gruff, gravelly.

“Um…night stand, beside the bed”

He was back in moments, holding her phone out to her and she took it, confused.

“Your date”

Now she was more confused.

“Your date,” he said again, his hands moving back to her hips, “cancel it.”

***

Those hands on her hips lifted her like she was weightless and she wrapped her legs around him, her lips searing a line down his throat and drawing out a delicious groan that sent her mind into overdrive.

The whole time he was muttering nothing words into her hair, how he wanted her, promises of what he would do to her. 

“Oh God Doll, I don’t even to touch you to know how wet you are for me” he whispered and she knew it was true.

He set her down and she wanted to whine at the loss of contact but then she felt his fingers fumbling with the buttons of Dan’s shirt. Fumbling on the second button he huffed and wrenched the shirt apart, the remaining buttons cartwheeling off in different directions. 

She grinned up at him as the shirt fell open to reveal her date-night lingerie. The longline bra did wonders for her girls and the French-cut panties barely functioned to cover her milky skin. 

Max felt like she wanted to twirl for him, give him a show, but she barely had time to think before she felt his hand smoothing over the curve of her ass in the panties. She grinned and took control, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and dragging him towards the bed. 

Her feverish fingers moved to push his shirt up and he wrenched it off the rest of the way then took a moment to congratulate herself and take in the sculpted muscles of his torso. She bit her lip and reached up to kiss him again. He used his knee to nudge her legs apart as she fumbled with his belt buckle and flicked open the button on his jeans.

She pushed herself up off the mattress long enough to tear of her shirt, she didn’t want to be wearing Dan’s shirt just now. 

Jake’s enhanced hand folded into her hair and his other fell to her breast, plucking at her nipple through the green lace and she groaned low in the back of her throat.

“Fuck Jake”

“What is it Max? What do you want baby?” he asked, his lips seconds from her own.

“Just you”

He let his head fall forward onto her chest and she pushed his jeans down past his hips, letting him kick them off. At the same time she shucked her lace panties and let them fall off the side of the bed. 

Jack leaned back on his knees and she whimpered at the loss of contact. He shushed her as he ran his hands down her side, catching her knees and dragging her legs to fit over his hips. 

It was still early and the late afternoon sun was dappled, splashing across his body and making him look like a statue, his impossibly hard cock straining against his belly. He traced lazy circles on his hips and looked up at her through long lashes. She bit her lip again and he groaned, moving forward and positioning himself so that his head was right against her cunt. She’d planned on getting fucked tonight, but had never thought it would be Jake. 

She cried out as she felt him enter her, slowly at first, until she rocked her hips upwards to let him know to just fucking do it. He surged forward and slammed home and god, the noises she was making were criminal as he moved inside her. 

He was everything, right then. She’d never been lit up like she was at that moment and she wanted everything and nothing at the same time. She whined his name as she felt her release approaching. She sucked her trembling fingers into her mouth and Jake moaned as he watched her slip them down between them to stroke her clit.

Max felt her legs start to tremble and Jake’s hand fisted in her hair, making her cry out from the delicious moment of pain that sent her tumbling over the verge. She began to cry out his name and he smothered her words with his lips, breathing in her cries like they were life as he fucked her through her orgasm. 

His own movements soon became erratic and he pulled her up like a rag doll so that she straddling him. She was boneless and loose, her limbs felt like honey and she let herself be shifted and manipulated while Jake sought his own release. All she wanted to do was tangle her fingers in that soft hair and breathe in that leathery smell of him, so she did. He hissed when her fingers tightened in his hair and he bit down on her shoulder, bucking up into her twice more before he came with another of those deep moans that Max would never get tired of hearing. 

He leaned his forehead to hers, their sweat slicked bodies cooling in the darkening room. Jake reached up to tuck a hank of hair behind her ear and she wondered what came next. He shifted beneath her like she was weightless, moving to lie down and pulling her down with him, slipping out of her as they moved. 

Reaching for her hand he pulled it across his chest and tucked her into his side.

“I told you,” he said, in that cigarette-stained voice.

“Mmmm?”

“The red dress, that’s the one to wear if you want to make an impression. All you did was hold it up against yourself for me”

Max smiled into his side and shifted closer to his warmth, he was like a fucking radiator. She could definitely get used to this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more smut, the Robin Hood virus and Jake's disappearing act.

Afterwards the full moon illuminated the apartment through the curtainless windows. They had had sex again, the frenzy of their first time left behind; everything slower, smoother the second time. They had fallen asleep with their legs tangled together and she’d woken up like that. 

Jake was still asleep and Max watched him in the moonlight. For the first time she noticed the puckered, raised marks on her torso, where he’d born torn and put back together again many, many times. There was so much hurt written across his body. Surely more than a day labourer would pick up. What had happened to him?

He stirred and his brow furrowed, a wince. He jerked when she reached out to soothe him and stared across at her, his eyes wide and for a moment she was a stranger in them.

“Hey,” she said, the word spoken softly but falling harshly in the stillness of the night. 

Jake blinked and then his eyes warmed and he reached out to touch her like she might not be real.

“Hey”

Max curled on her side and smiled a small, secret smile.

***

She stood under the water, letting it beat the knots out of her shoulders and neck. It was only just past six but she was expected at the garage before eight. 

She turned when she heard the curtain open and smiled when she saw Jake standing there, his eyebrow raised in question. She nodded and he stepped into the shower with her. 

His strong hands took over from the water, kneading and smoothing her shoulders until the joints felt like butter and she moaned. 

Turning her around to face him, his lips caught hers and he nudged her legs apart, sliding into her slowly and making her gasp. One of her hands slammed against the tiles and her other fisted in his hair while he fucked her against the wall. 

Max’s legs wrapped around his hips as his thrusts quickened and he came with a groan.

Afterwards he kissed her and told her he hadn’t expected that. She blushed and let him take her loofah and wash her with the citrus body wash, let him linger on her breasts, let his clever fingers slip between her folds and bring her, embarrassingly quickly, to her own orgasm. 

Jake needed to be at work too he told her as they dressed, but he would see her that night. She could be sure of it, he promised as they kissed once more.

***

She didn’t see him that night. 

Or the next day.

After the third day she knocked on his apartment door. No answer.

After the fifth day she sent him a text message. _Just check to make sure you’re okay_

Two days later, with no reply, she gave up.

***

One week after the night she shared with Jake, Max stood across the road from Clayton Banking’s head office. 

It was one of the area’s original buildings, but it held its own even though it was dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers. It’s floor to ceiling mirrored windows reflected the city that had grown around it and the marble pillars spoke to the wealth that had kept it rooted there. 

Max had flipped up the hood of the jumper she wore underneath her leather jacket and began to tune in to the systems of the bank. 

She’d already hacked their online presence, memorized the patterns and clues that she could use today. 

Leaning up against a light pole she let her eyelids get heavy. She called it syncing, when she let herself become one with technology. It was like a hypnic jerk, when you felt yourself jolt just as you were falling into sleep. She would feel as though she was being pulled backwards at speed and then she was surrounded by every firing synapse of the machinery. While she would move around in the real world, her mind would be in the computer. 

She followed the threads and pin pricks of Clayton’s system, quickly finding the large accounts she had researched. They belonged to mercenaries and white collar criminals, people who profited on the misery of others and enjoyed doing it. But the time she was finished with them, their ill gotten proceeds would be filtered through seventeen different channels and hidden in the far more deserving accounts of inner-city missions, organisations that worked with child solders, and humble soup kitchens. 

Max frowned, it was as though each door she tried was locked. She pushed a little harder, nudged a little further, but everywhere she poked, she was slammed out by the bank’s systems, it had never happened before. 

Concentrating harder, she pushed further, probing into the different crevices and cracks the systems held; physically flinching when the system shut down like a door slamming.

***

“I don’t get it,” she said to Pop later, “it shut down like a fucking bear trap”

He was leaning over the open hood of a truck while Max perched on a nearby stool with a coke. 

“Do you know why?”

“Nope. Never had it happen before, but it felt synthetic”

He turned to look at her and shrug and she grinned.

“I mean it, it felt like a mechanism somebody had created, like, to keep me out”

“Well that’s possible isn’t it? You’ve been leaving your mark all over the big banks”

She nodded thoughtfully and chewed on her lip. In her pocket her cell phone vibrated. She checked it quickly, a text from Helen. Heard anything from ninja-boy? She typed back in the negative and turned back to Pop.

“I think you’re right, but it’s been purpose built, by somebody pretty fucking clever. I’m gonna have to think about this”

“You could just let it go” Pop suggested., wiping his hands on his overalls. She rolled her eyes.

“Are you kidding? They’re fucking criminals, this government isn’t gonna make ‘em pay. Someone has to”

He chuckled.

“Commie” He muttered, pressing a fatherly kiss to her forehead and snaking her coke. 

“Old man” she bit back with a grin.

***

_How’s your date going?_

Max grinned at Helen’s text as her date slammed the taxi door. 

“So this is your place?” Adrianne asked. 

Max had met her at a party she and Helen had gone to. She worked for a modeling agency and looked like a model herself. In fact, she’d told Max, she _had_ modeled during high school, but preferred being behind the scenes now. She was all soft curves and pink lips and sleek red bob. 

Max liked kissing her. She kissed her in the lobby of the apartment building, and then again on the fifth step. 

In her pocket she felt her phone buzz.

“Sorry” she muttered against Adrianne’s plump lips that tasted like the waxy tea rose lipstick she was wearing, “It’s Helen, she’s a busy body”

“That’s okay” Adrianne replied, taking a step back and readjusting her cute-as-fuck little sequined dress.

It wasn’t Helen.

_Sorry I’ve been out of touch, need to talk_

Jake. 

“What did she want?” Adrianne asked, reaching out for Max’s hand. 

“She wanted to know how it’s going” Max said with a smile.

“What did you tell her?”

“I haven’t replied yet, what should I tell her?”

“I’d say it’s going well” Adrianne said with a flirty smile.

Max kissed her on the ninth step. 

They were giggling by the time they reached Max’s door and Jake must have heard because he appeared at his at the same time.

“Max”

“Hi” she said, her arm around Adrianne’s perfect waist. 

He looked tired. 

Gorgeous as ever.

But tired.

Fuck him.

She tilted her neck a bit and Adrianne took the bait, leaning into her. Max smirked as Jake seemed to falter, confused.

“Can you uh…can we talk?”

“Right now? It’s not really a good time”

“Yeah well, I’m sorry about that but we need to talk”

Adrianne stiffened beside her and though Max tried to pull her close, she started to move away.

“Is everything okay?” Adrianne asked.

Jake glanced at her and gave her an appreciative once over.

“Everything’s fine Red, just need to talk to my neighbor”

“Don’t be an asshole”

He had the good grace to look chagrinned.

“I’m sorry….”

“Adrianne,” Max supplied.

“I’m sorry Adrianne, I just need to talk to Max”

“Jake please”

Adrianne’s eyes widened.

“Jake?” She asked Max, “The Jake you were telling me about?”

Max rolled her eyes and nodded. Adrianne grinned. Jake looked confused.

“Oh boy,” Adrianne said with a sly grin, “I don’t know what you’re planning on saying buddy, but it’ll want to be good. So I’m just going to go and leave you guys to it”

She leaned forward and pressed those magnificent lips to Max’s.

“Call me” she said, backing away, “I had a blast, and I also kinda want to know how this…” she motioned between Jake and Max, “…turns out”.

***

Max threw her keys into the bowl on the counter as Jake closed the door behind him. When she turned she realized he wasn’t just tired. He was pretty banged up. It looked like he’d been in one hell of a bar fight. 

She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.

“Well?” She finally said, “you scared my date off, this had better be good”

Jake looked shocked and she took a moment to be delighted. She’d spent the last ten days pretty fucking mad at him, but it felt good to see his pretty face again, the sinful quirk of that dirty mouth. 

“Wait that was your...she was…?”

Max pursed her lips.

“Yes, I was on a date with Adrianne and it was going pretty well”

“I’m sorry”

“What do you want Jake?”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

“I just wanted to say I was sorry for not being around.”

Max shrugged and he sighed again. That sound did something to her and she didn’t know how. Ten minutes earlier she’d been geared up for some girly fun, but now all she could think of was dropping to her knees and wrapping her mouth around his…

“You’re just gonna pout at me?” He asked.

“What?”

“Well traditionally when a person apologises, the other person forgives them”

“You didn’t apologise!” she snapped, “you were still getting around to that”

Jake rolled his eyes.

“Fine, I’m sorry”

“Thank you” Max replied, “you can leave now”

Jake groaned in frustration.

“I’m not leaving, we’re not done here”

“What else is there Jake? We fucked, you never called, you’re sorry, we’re done”

“It’s not that simple”

“It really is”

“It’s really not, why are you being so childish?”

Max did a double take as he stepped toward her, fisting his hand in her hair and pulling lightly. 

“Don’t touch me” she said, with absolutely no conviction.

“No?” He tightened his grip on her hair and she gasped.

She felt a flutter in her stomach and pressed her thighs together. It wasn’t missed by Jake. 

“You don’t want me touch you?” He asked, leaning closer, his breath hot on her cheek.

“No” she whined, even as her body betrayed her, pushing closer to him.

“It feels like you want me to touch you,” he whispered as his other hand trailed up her thigh. 

“I can’t stand the sight of you” she spat at him, another half truth.

“We can fix that,” he replied, spinning her around so she slammed her hands on the counter. His hands fell to her hips, hiking up the fabric of her dress and tugging at the fabric of her panties.

Behind her she could hear the rattle of his belt buckle, the tug of his zipper. She shuddered against the warmth of him as he leaned over her.

“You make me crazy” he murmured against her earlobe, “you make me crazy Max, what is this?”

She couldn’t have answered even if she had an answer for him. Instead she gave into breathy moans as he slid into her, crushing her against the counter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max strikes again at Clayton Banking and finds out that Jake isn't all he appears to be.

Max smiled when she felt Jake’s lips on her bare shoulder the next morning.

“Don’t get up,” he whispered, “I have to go sort some things out, but I’ll be back, okay? We have stuff to talk about”

Max stretched against him and nodded. 

After he left the bed felt cold and Max couldn’t back to sleep. She had plans anyway. She and Pop had hashed it out and she figured she could get around whatever system Clayton was using if she was closer to it. 

Max couldn’t remember a time she didn’t have her abilities. But when they were still immature she had needed to be physically close to whatever she was trying to manipulate, touching it in some cases. If she could get close enough to their servers they wouldn’t stand a chance. 

It felt like she was dressing for a war as she laced up her long black boots over her black jeans. She added a burgundy singlet and then zipped up her hooded leather jacket, stuffing a black bandana into her pocket as she left the apartment. She’d be back in plenty of time to meet up with Jake.

***

There was an employee entrance to the Clayton building from the car park. Max vaulted over the car park’s boom gate and made her way to the employee door. Once there she took a moment to tie her black bandana around the bottom half of her face. She’d be able to run interference on any cameras, but she didn’t want any personnel to be able to give a good description of her.

The door opened for her and she slipped inside. She knew from her research that the servers were kept in three floors below the ground. She let herself into a service elevator not far from the door and rigged it to head towards the floor she wanted. 

She was in full mission mode, at the same time that she was monitoring the CCTV channels to make sure she was alone, she was also intercepting all communications in and out of the building. Helen never ceased to be amazed at the amount of information that Max could intercept and synthesise. But Max had been doing it for so long that it seemed completely ordinary. 

When the elevator doors opened on the right floor, everything seemed completely fine, nobody had noticed her entry to the building. The floor seemed quiet too and she stepped out gingerly. 

The entire floor was open and dark in an effort to keep the servers cool. The towers were separated into aisles and she began walking down the center. 

The hum of the machines would be deafening to anybody else, but to Max it felt like home, the same way that somebody else might warm to the sound of cicadas or a slowly babbling brook. This was her sound. She trailed her fingers along the black metal boxes. She had a lot of work to do down here. She sat down cross-legged on the floor and began to concentrate. 

All told it took about four minutes for her to crack the Clayton mainframe and start disrupting the company’s normal operations. From there she was able to start segueing funds into different places. 

The block was still there, she could feel it like a tickle in her throat that she couldn’t shake but she had been right, being closer had done the trick, it made her focus sharper, her abilities stronger. 

Of course that increased focus was probably the reason that she missed the insistent noise of the block when it registered her interference and began to report back to whoever or whatever had installed it. 

 

Of course she did once she was leaving. 

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath as she felt the elevators heading towards the level. She made a bolt for the staircase instead, bursting through the door as the elevator doors pinged. She was hardly the most athletic person in the city, but fear of being arrested can do wonders for your personal best time. 

She had made it up one flight before she heard the door below her slammed open and she heard people storming up the stairs towards her. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

They were using headsets so she sent out a wave that stopped just short of bursting their ear drums, but left them cowering for long enough for her to get a decent head start. 

She was regretting her lapsed gym membership by the time she hit the ground floor. She could feel that the door she’d entered through was blocked off now, the whole place seemed to be on lock down. She made a hard turn to the left instead, mentally plotting the layout of the building. 

She could hear shouts behind her and skidded to her left down another hall way that should lead to the reception area. 

Her boots hit the marbled floor and she heard screams from the bust reception desks as thugs in all black turned to train their big fucking guns on her. She came to a stop, arms in the air.

“Good morning for it boys?” She asked, her voice muffled a bit by the bandana as she tossed her hair back and their guns all unloaded onto the floor, drawing more shrieks from the women behind the counter. 

“Stand down!” One thug ordered, inching toward her. 

She cocked her head and increased the signal in their head sets, almost hearing the whine herself as several of them dropped to their knees. 

She moved quickly, winding her way through the writhing bodies on the floor as she simultaneously tried to break the lockdown on the building. In the distance she could hear sirens. It was taking too long. In frustration she kicked at the front door. It jiggled but didn’t move. She crossed to the nearest thug and picked up his gun, reloading it with practiced ease and aimed it at the window, making sure that there was nobody outside before she started firing straight into it. The bullets didn’t go all the way through but the wrecked enough of the window for her to be able to kick through it. She dropped the gun on the floor as she stepped through the shards.

Outside the street was deserted, but she could hear vehicles speeding towards the building in a way that told her it was their destination and overhead she could hear choppers. 

It was happening quickly but she was quicker. The first van pulled to a screaming stop in front of her and more black-clad thugs poured out, guns trained. She dismissed them with the same high pitched signal through their headset and feinted to the left. 

Then she heard his voice.

“Max!”

She turned. One of the thugs was walking towards her, his earpiece removed, or perhaps he’d never had one. He was in all black like the others, but different. The same tactical pants, the same gun, but his top was made of leather straps intertwined and with only one sleeve because his left arm wasn’t flesh and blood, it was metal, glinting in the morning sun. 

He inched towards her, holding out his normal arm.

“Max, stand down”

Of course she knew him. She wasn’t fucking blind. Like everyone else on the planet she’d been glued to her TV set during he and Cap’s stand off with Tony Stark at the airport, she’d read the same conspiracy theories about him being locked away in Wakanda under the protection of King T’Challa. 

But like some pathetic fucking Lois Lane, she hadn’t recognized him when he was in her own bed. Of course the fake arm had helped, and who ever really believes that an ex-spysassin turned super hero moves in next door to you? When he’d said they had things to discuss he hadn’t been wrong. 

She felt tears prick the back of her eyes and wanted to scream. Instead she took control of half a dozen nearby cars and maneuvered them to be between she and him. 

He seemed surprised and she took a moment to be quite pleased at that.

Of course in the next second he had leaped over the barrier. 

“Stand down Max” he repeated, as more thugs made their way towards her. He turned, telling them to keep back.

“Fuck you” she spat at him and he took another step closer to her. As he did she took control of his arm. His eyes widened as she manipulated it with ease, twisting it behind his back to a point that must have been painful (she hope so at least) and brought him to his knees in the street. She could feel the motorbike coming straight towards her and took control of it, ducking as its rider was thrown from it. Max ran to where the bike fell as was on it in a flash, gunning away from the bank.

***

She dumped the bike in a back alley about ten blocks from Pop’s and hailed a cab. When she got to the garage Pop was playing cards with his regular guys. He seemed to realise straight away that something was wrong.

“You know that thing we planned for” she said, wincing as she limped to his side and wondering when she’d taken a hit, “it’s time”.

Pop stood up immediately and crossed to his office, unlocking the closet in there and pulling out a duffel bag. He threw a clean rag at Max.

“Clean yourself up kid,” he wheezed before swearing and turning to look through a peg board filled with keys, “Jesus Christ, I told you to be careful”

“I was careful” she replied, crossing to the small basin with the mirror above it and wiping a smear of blood from a cut above her eyebrow. 

Pop moved to stand behind her and handed her a set of keys. 

“Come with me”

She followed him through the shop and out to the lot out back where he kept some of his pet projects, cars he collected to work on in spare time that he never seemed to have. He led her to a pale green Camaro from the mid-80s and shrugged at her raised eyebrows.

“It’s fast,” he said by way of explanation, “Where are you gonna go?”

Max bit her lip and looked anywhere but at him.

“Pop, with the guys who are after me there’s…” she took a deep breather and closed her eyes for a moment, “I don’t know where I could go that they won’t find me. But wherever it is, it’s best you don’t know”

Pop nodded and held out his arms and she fell into them.

***

The goons caught up with her on the freeway. She felt the choppers before she heard them and then saw the black SUVs speeding up in the rearview.

The Camaro rattled as the first SUV hit it from behind, forcing it into the guardrails. The second came up beside her boxing her in. Taking control of the car with her mind, Max undid her seatbelt and climbed into the back seat, kicking out the rear window. She wasn’t gonna make it easy for them. 

She hit the road harder than she’d wanted to and rolled a few times before getting to shaky feet. The freeway was quiet, but not deserted and she took control of a nearby car. Just as she was bringing it towards her, the terrified driver not knowing what to do, she noticed the motorcycle gunning for her. She recognized it straight away, after all she was the one who gave it its tuneup just a few weeks back. 

His metal arm glinted as the bike came to a halt by her. Goons spilled from the black SUVs. She was surrounded.

He walked towards her, a gun trained on her the whole time which she had to admit was a little insulting.

“You’re kidding yourself if you think I can’t take that from you” she said.

He stared at her.

“You’re kidding yourself if you think I won’t take you down where you stand” he replied. 

His eyes were cold, not Jake’s eyes, and she shuddered in spite of herself. 

“You need to come with us Ms. Maxwell” came a new voice.

Max spun on her heel and came face-to-face with a suit. No tactical gear, no gun, just a well-dressed suit. 

Max ran the numbers in her head, she knew she could take the vehicles on the ground, and perhaps the choppers, but she couldn’t be sure that there wouldn’t be casualties. In the end the decision was taken out of her hands as the Winter Soldier slipped right up behind her and put his metal arm up to the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry Max” he said, sounding just like Jake, and she felt everything go black.


End file.
